Fun with public domain

Public domain may be making your summer more fun and you may not even know it.

I've heard from someone I trust in these matters that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an excellent read. (The critic in question is an avid reader who counts zombie stories and Jane Austen novels among her top three literary genres. The other one is contemporary Shojo Manga.)

The novel in question, for the uninitiated, is an adaptation of Jane Austen's 1813 novel of manners that has won over many hearts and minds in countless undergraduate literature classes and PBS productions. Much of the plot, characters, and tone are very similar to Austen's. Just, with zombies. Oh, and ninjas.

So, why is OK for Seth Grahame-Smith to knock off Austen's work?

Pride and Prejudice was published almost 200 years ago, which puts it squarely in the public domain. That means that there's no prohibition against reprinting, copying, or, in this case, repurposing Austen's work. (That also means that the book can be made available online, in its entirety, for free.)

Generally speaking, any work published in the U.S. prior to 1923 has entered the public domain. There are some other ways that works enter the public domain, too. Copyright owners can dedicate books to the public domain, for instance, which is pretty rare. Because of the way the law was written earlier in the 20th Century, works published between 1923 and 1964 had to have been renewed in the 28th year after their publication. If the copyright owner failed to renew, the works entered Public Domain. (Stanford University Libraries have created a searchable database of copyright renewals that's available here.)

Unfortunately, legal protection for sound recordings was treated different during much of the 20th Century, which means that, under current law, we won't see public domain sound recordings until the second half of the 21st Century, at the earliest. So you can probably scrap your plan to record "The White Album with Werewolves" or "Milestones with Mummies."

However...Don Juan with Dinosaurs? Yes. Great Gatsby and Goblins? Almost, but not yet.